


we don't have time for that

by kickmyhead



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alex POV because. king, Alternate Universe - Paranormal Investigators, F/F, F/M, M/M, Willie Being The Better Smarter Faster Stronger youtuber, and alex is just Constantly In Danger indiana jones style, and uploaded the footage onto youtube, from his beat up scooby van, right so hear me out what if alex and reggie investigated paranormal activity, tags to be added as the story progresses, the gang will be here!! eventually!, while reggie is just serenely blasting rock and hacking into security camerasa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28908087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickmyhead/pseuds/kickmyhead
Summary: "Danger's my middle name!" Alex said brightly, as Willie looked dubious. "Actually, it's Stephen. That's stupid, I don't know why I said that."Reggie audibly smacked his forehead from the van.
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 54





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ah!!! im so excited to write this!! hope you enjoy :]]

Alex banged slightly against his flashlight, sickly yellow washing over the museum floors. It faltered, blinking, and finally puttered out, leaving him in complete darkness. Taxidermied extinct animals loomed over him, beady eyes mournful and teeth glimmering.

Leaning into his walkie talkie, eyes still locked with a bear, he whispered an  _ over  _ into the speaker.

  
There was a crackle on the other end, and the distant rattle of a plate. “Mm, yeah?”   
  
“ _ My flashlight just went out. _ ” He hissed, frantically.

Reggie’s voice filtered through, still frustratingly laid back. “Uh oh.”   
  
“Yeah, uh oh.”   
  


“Okay, so, where are you?”   
  
The clack-clack-clack of a keyboard sounded out on the other end, and Alex was oddly relieved. Reggie had mastered the art of typing insanely quickly, and, as customary for The Guy In The Van, he had an insanely loud keyboard to match. Alex was honestly kind of impressed with it. Maybe he got it custom made.

He looked around, making sure to tread softly because this place was mad echoey. “I think- the taxidermy aisle? Aisle? Is that what you call it?”   
  
He could hear an audible gulp on the other end. Reggie was cartoonish like that. “Dude, you’re in the archeology section.”   
  
Alex’s heart dropped.

The bear snapped its jaw shut, eyes still locked with Alex’s, and slowly started to lumber forwards,  _ towards him _ . He stumbled back.

He had thought it was weird there were no podiums.

Alex  _ ran _ .

Sneakers echoing against the marble floors, he leapt over glass display cases and through areas marked off with thick velvet rope, vaguely reminded of doing hurdles in Gym. Creatures roared behind him, animated and  _ very much alive _ , and Alex couldn’t stop thinking about the beady eyes and the empty look. Haunted museums terrorised by a knight in shining armour were one thing. Sabre toothed tigers with blood on their teeth were another.

Reggie was frantically jabbering on the end of the speaker, speaking like a racehorse commentator as he advised Alex to  _ duck, dodge, and holy shit they’re gaining on you, man! _

You know, when he saw Indiana Jones as a kid he hadn’t expected the whole adventuring thing to be so stressful. Reggie had it easy. He was the iconic, noodle eating, headphone wearing tech guy, who even owned his full van chock full of computers and a gaming rig he’d set up for his own sake. Alex wasn’t even allowed to be the suave spy, he was dodging paranormal shit so much. It was stressful! Goddamn his complete and utter lack of knowledge on anything nerdy, or he’d be in that van right now, blasting bad rock and being the picture of serene advice. 

Contemplating this, he dodged a stray zebra, who looked very keen on kicking him in the head.

“Please tell me you’re screen recording this footage right now.” Alex said into the walkie talkie, panting.   
  
“...Shit.”   
  
“Reggie!”   
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I got distracted!”   
  
“Doing  _ what? _ ” The coast was pretty clear so far, so he slowed to an extremely fast jog. 

  
“Well, I was looking up… y’know, instances of taxidermied animals coming alive and trying to eat people, and I found some info on it! There were some typical spooky facts channels, instagram accounts, that sort of thing, but- Alex,  _ watch out! _ ”   
  
A bear claw lunged straight at his head, and he ducked just in time. It hit one of those fancy fake museum pillars, plaster flaking. The bear growled, swinging again. Alex felt worn out.

“You’re close to the exit!” Reggie said, with the tone of a fitness coach promising only five more push ups. “Just keep at it!”   
  
Alex continued running, and finally made it through the victory lap of the gift shop, in all its stuffed-animal-nostalgia-candy-that-gives-you-food-poisoning glory. He did the movie thing where you put your hands on your knees and took unfulfilling breaths. It didn’t work.

“I love living vicariously through you.” Reggie’s disembodied voice said, completely unaware of how Alex was feeling like he was going to have a cardiac arrest. “It’s like a movie, but if the main character was very incompetent.”   
  
“You are so good to me.” Alex panted, not even bothering to turn around and face the bear banging on the glass. “I am treated so well, and I have no qualms whatsoever with how this ghosthunting business is working out.”   
  


He could audibly hear Reggie smile. “Great. Come in the van, I ordered pizza.”   
  
“Do you have some sort of  _ Pizza Hut hookup? _ ”   
  
“Yes. His name is Mike, and he’s a better friend than you’ll ever be.”   


  
  
  
Alex leaned back on Reggie’s beanbag and sighed, hands in his lap. “I could’ve died today.”   
  
Reggie took a bite of his pizza, chewing thoughtfully. “Yeah. Huh. That’s weird to think about.”   
  
“What, you never contemplate your own mortality?”   
  
“Nope. Never.”    
  
“That is not at all surprising.” Alex started folding up his pizza box, handing Reggie his crusts. “But like… isn’t it worrying?”   
  


“I mean, I’m not scared of death.” Reggie leant back against his Gamer Chair™, ( _ now with all new cupholders! _ ) face thoughtful. “I feel like… I’ve lived a good life so far, yaknow? I have a best friend, I have a van, and I rank league in Splatoon, so basically all my goals are accomplished. I think, like, even if you’re deeply unhappy for most of your life, just a little bit of joy can make it all worthwhile. Every day I make my life important just by existing, and that’s all I can ever ask for.” He chewed on a pizza crust. “If that makes sense.”   
  
“You’re so emotionally well adjusted it’s actually worrying.”   
  
“That’s me. Sitcom best friend archetype. Wanna play Mario Kart?”   
  
“Hell yeah I do.”   
  


Eventually, in the middle of hitting Yoshi in his dumb stupid toadstool face with a blue shell, Reggie remembered what he was going to say about the near-death experience Alex had earlier that evening. He genuinely slapped his forehead. The man belonged in Looney Tunes.

“Holy shit! Yeah, I remembered!”   
  
“Remembered what?” Alex preemptively paused the game. He was in third place. He didn’t want to lose that. Waluigi deserved a win.

  
“This dude wants to kill us!”   
  
“ _ What? _ ”


	2. Chapter 2

“So, basically, I was checking around on our subreddit for a story I remember someone sent in about that stuff, and I came across this  _ weird _ block of text. Front of the page. I thought it was written in Latin at first, so I ran it through google, and it came back with something. Didn’t say which language it was, though, so that was also weird.” He grabbed his laptop and brought up one of his many, many tabs, before squinting, washed in the harsh blue light of the screen. Reggie seemed to be treating death threats very flippantly. “Alex Mercer and Reggie Peters. Sins sacrilege etched into time. Death brought to those who seek it. Life gifted on those who earn it. What is granted cannot be reversed. End the cycle and die trying. It’s got five downvotes.”   
  


Alex stared at the screen, his vision blurring. “What the fuck.” He said, quietly.

“Yeah, that was my reaction.” Reggie closed his laptop, leaving them in the more mellow light of the TV. Light, bouncy Mario Kart music played in the background. He was still inexplicably chipper. Reggie saw mysteries as fun little challenges, like working out a Rubik’s cube. It was all a game to him, seen through a monitor. He never realised the reality of it, and maybe that did him better. “I did some more digging, forwarded the post to some of my contacts, checked back on our channel for any speech patterns that we could recognise, and I gathered two things.”   
  
Alex’s mind was racing, but in the wrong direction. Backing up into mud and revving it through the wheels, splashing it across the street. His life was threatened daily, but it was upfront. “What are they?” He offered, weakly. 

“One. We’ve never given out our full names on our Youtube channel before. They probably had to do some old profile stalking to come up with that. And two. Only one other person that I know of has received a threat like this before.” He clicked on another tab. A professionally done channel trailer played out before them, fun editing cutting in shocking clips of heavy breathing and ghostly moans to snarky jokes. The banner was vaguely memey. He had a check mark next to his channel name. He was the real deal.    
  
Alex stared, furrowing his eyebrows. “Another ghost hunting channel?”   
  
“Yep. His name’s Willie, he’s got quite the following.” Reggie coughed. “He, uh, gets sponsors.”   
  
“Holy shit.” Alex widened his eyes, and tried to ignore the lump in his throat. He was still… shaken. They’d received threats before, usually paired with accusations of being shameless conmen, but this one rang different. It gave him a feeling he couldn’t place. It felt old, like an ancient lock on a prison that’s so gummed up you can’t even open it. It felt like it could trap him if it wanted to.

“He’s the real deal. I sent him a DM and he said he’d meet you.” Reggie already unpaused Mario Kart, slowly gaining on a stationary Waluigi. “He seems like a super nice guy.”   
  
Alex picked up his controller, taking a deep breath that Reggie kindly didn’t comment on. He slowly started turning Waluigi around, fumbling with the buttons. “What do you mean by ‘you’?”   
  
“I’m not meeting him.” Reggie said, casually taking a sip of the weird, heathenous drink he referred to as Gamer Juice, that the only thing Alex knew about was that it had a lot of caffeine.    
  
“ _ What? _ ” 

“No, yeah, I used the official instagram account, and because you mostly show up on it, uh… He kinda assumed it was you? And I was too awkward to tell him otherwise?”   
  
“Reggie!”    
  
“I’m sorry, man. It’s like, he’s one of those people that you’re super afraid to fuck up around just in case you come across weird, you know? Like those children that were at the montessori you were afraid of.”   
  
“Volunteering is hard!” Alex protested shrilly. 

“I’m sure it will be fine.” Toad crossed the finish line. “Score! Terrible day for Waluigi.”   
  
“The man just cannot win.”   
  
  
Alex gripped the address in his hand, staring up at the foreboding coffee shop in front of him. It was one of those downtown coffee shops full of people drinking from mason jars and blackboards with cutesy calligraphy, and Alex was terrified. He’d never been in one of these before, mostly due to the fact he had actual taste, but still. 

Social interaction. Here we go.   
  
He stepped in, fanfare coming in the form of the obnoxiously large bell hinged on the door. It was bustling, jam packed with business people in their drab suits, college students without VPNS finishing essays, painfully loud friend groups that acted like they knew the staff personally, millennials with trust funds, and generally anybody who had a semblance of money to waste, or didn’t but pretended they did. Alex stuffed his hands into his pockets, letting the door close behind him, and scanned the room for Willie. Or was that too personal? William? Was that too  _ formal? _

Jesus. He spotted a waving from halfway through the coffee shop, and weaved his way in and out backpacks dumped on the floor and shoes, imagining a horrible and frightening scenario where he had to interact with someone extra for accidentally stepping on them. Finally making his way over to the table, he sat down on the uncomfortable wicker chair, and faced Willie.

  
Jesus. Fuck.

Alex didn’t believe in love at first sight. What he  _ did _ believe in, however, is getting incredibly flustered at an attractive person at first sight. And boy, did he believe in it then.

Willie had long hair, and an incredibly wacky fashion sense, that somehow  _ worked _ , and a nice smile, and- he was staring.

He coughed, and tried to flash a confident grin. “Hi. Um, Alex Mercer. Or- I guess you already knew that.” 

Willie smiled. “Hey!” He reached out a hand.

  
Alex tried to shake it.   
  
Willie tried to go for a high five. 

They missed each other horribly.

Ping ping ping! Alex just achieved the Worst First Impression Ever! Congratulations, he’d won a car filled with bees!   
  


There was a long moment of silence. 

“So…” Alex coughed. He was distantly aware that Willie probably thought he had a sore throat. “The threats.”   
  
“Yeah.” Willie said uncomfortably. “I mean, it’s probably some weirdo, right? Who wants to get… ghost clout, or whatever. Thinks making weird threats are funny.”   
  
“Probably, yeah.” Alex shifted in his seat. Willie looked nervous, looked so different from the confidence and jokes on the videos Reggie had shown him. As if he felt like Alex did, but was afraid to say it. “But, uh, that last line, it’s worded weirdly.”   
  
“The whole thing is worded weirdly.” 

  
“Yeah, but- stop the cycle, and die trying, right? It’s a direct threat. But what’s the cycle? Why not tell us they found our address and call it a day? It’s-”   
  
And that’s when every head in the coffee shop turned to them, eyes glowing.


End file.
